ARTICLES ABOUT TURBINE BY DATE - PAGE 3

York officials have taken the first steps toward crafting wind turbine regulations. At a Wednesday night Planning Commission work session, the five commissioners in attendance were unanimous in their support for regulations that would permit the use of wind turbines for generating electricity. During the lengthy discussion, commissioners differed on how regulations should be applied, with some supporting turbines by right in certain areas, while others maintained a desire to have all proposals vetted on a case-by-case basis.

As a groundswell of interest in renewable energy has swept across Virginia and the nation, the prospect of harvesting energy from the steady wind off the coast of Virginia appears to be gaining momentum. State officials, scientists and private industry have expressed an intention to bolster the state's renewable energy portfolio with an offshore wind farm, a project that could eventually produce more than 150 megawatts of electricity continuously - enough to power 50,000 to 60,000 homes.

Maybe it's the homemade windmills spinning on the balcony. Or the golf-cart batteries that power the kitchen. Or maybe it's the purple shag carpeting, pink shutters, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" furniture, leopard-print paint on the dining room floor or gold Rolls-Royce in the gravel driveway. Take your pick. But for plenty of reasons, the advertising slogan declaring The Neptune Vacation Suite Apartments as "the most unique destination on the Eastern Shore!!" might not be hyperbole after all. Thomas "Spess" Neblett, the owner and creator of this eclectic refuge in the quiet little town of Onley (pop.

Highland County residents worry that the proposed construction will affect the area's natural beauty. Pen Goodall looked over his little farm in Highland County, where he grows timber in the remote mountains a ridge away from the proposed site for Virginia's first wind turbines. Two orphaned lambs baaed pitifully in a corral nearby. He hunched his shoulders against the cold. The bitter day -- a spring storm had brought freezing temperatures and rain -- reflected his mood. "You're damn right I'm angry," he said about efforts to construct a series of 400-foot-high wind turbines atop Allegheny Mountain, a proposal that has infuriated many people in this sparsely populated county known for its pastoral beauty.

The Navy's next-generation destroyer will have an advanced electrical power system designed largely by engineers in Newport News. When you think of Northrop Grumman Newport News, Navy destroyers aren't typically the first ships that jump to mind. For decades, the shipyard has been almost exclusively a maker of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines, with some commercial ship-repair business on the side. And it's clear that the company doesn't plan to change its focus soon.

Anyone passing through the Forest area on U.S. 221 might wonder about the tall tower with three propellers, sometimes turning, often resting. Is it a bird? A plane? A secret CIA project? It's a wind turbine that American Electric Power built in 2000 as an experimental device for research and education. But AEP officials say the Forest turbine has been unsuccessful in fulfilling that mission. The turbine, an evolution of the windmills that dot the landscape of some rural areas to provide power for small houses and farms, converts the kinetic energy of wind into electricity through the use of its rotors, propellers and generators.

Howmet laid off 28 people last week, as the company continues a gradual scaling back of its local work force. The most recent layoff follows earlier cuts, and reduces the company's local work force to 1,485 workers, down by 387 from the number who worked at Howmet in February of 2001. Howmet, located in Hampton Industrial Park off Aberdeen Road, makes precision-cast metal blades that spin inside jet engines and industrial gas turbine engines. The company also makes other aircraft components.

Howmet Corp., already one of Hampton's largest employers with nearly 1,900 workers, is looking to expand its Hampton operations further. A maker of precision cast metal parts for industrial gas turbines and jet engines, Howmet is seeing so much new work -- particularly in its gas turbine division -- that it needs more space and more workers, said Doreen Deary, a company spokeswoman in Darien, Conn. "Hampton is very much part of Howmet's future picture," she said. "This is a long-term proposition."

The next generation of U.S. Navy aircraft carriers is going to be wired. Those new carriers, now known by the futuristic name CVNX, will have galleys, hot water heaters, laundries, even aircraft catapults and recovery equipment powered by electricity, not steam, as most of the systems have now. That will mean a great savings in weight by eliminating the thousands of feet of piping that steam systems require, said Matthew J. Mulherin, director...

Virginia Power must get bids from other electricity suppliers before building six power combustion turbines, the State Corporation Commission ruled Thursday after a three-day hearing. The turbines would supply power on very hot or cold days when power consumption is greatest. The commission said Virginia Power didn't provide persuasive evidence that it was the only supplier capable of meeting a deadline of July 1, 2000, to supply 864 megawatts of needed capacity. It ordered the utility to file a request for proposals by Tuesday.